Kandahar egg industry meets 40pc of local demand

KANDAHAR CITY (Pajhwok): With their number reaching 13 after inauguration of an advanced egg producing farm, the layer chicken industry in southern Kandahar province meets 40 percent of local demand.

The newly-built professional farm is opened in Daman district and it has the capacity to produce up to 10,000 eggs a day.

Mohammad Azam, owner of the farm, told Pajhwok Afghan News that despite the presence of other egg farms in Kandahar, he built a professional one equipped with advanced machineries for the first time.

He said he brought the machineries from China and invested more than $100,000 in the farm.

Housing 11,000 eggs laying hens, his farm manages food, eggs production and other activities by machineries, he said.

Azam added his farm produced 10,000 eggs a day and the eggs were offered to the market after packaging process.

“Other chicken farms in Kandahar are not very advanced and they have the capacity for only 6,000 chickens and can produce 5,000 eggs a day”, he said.

“Egg farm machinery is better because it simplifies management of chicken feeding and eggs production”, he said.

His investment in Kandahar was aimed at modernizing eggs producing process and preventing the import of low quality eggs from abroad.

Kandahar agriculture officials say that there are 13 egg farms in the province and the recently activated one is advanced and equipped with machineries.

Eng. Mohammad Ullah Noori, livestock promotion head at the provincial agriculture department, said that building egg farms in Kandahar began in 2010. He said farms in Kandahar had been invested more than 44 million afghanis.

“These farms produce 115,000 eggs a day and they meet 40 percent of Kandahar people’s need while some are exported to other provinces as well”, he said.

Noori said that the remaining 60 percent of eggs were imported from Pakistan and Iran as 200,000 eggs were daily sold in Kandahar province.

He said 360,000 eggs were imported from Pakistan and Iran per day and sold in Kandahar, Helmand and some other provinces.

The eggs produced inside the country are better in quality and size than the imported ones, Noori said.

He added eggs produced inside the country were sold one afghani higher than imported ones due to their better quality. The price of one egg in Kandahar is nine afghanis.

Noori also said there were no labs to diagnosis chicken diseases in Kandahar while medicines were imported from neighboring countries.

However, fortunately recently CARD-F organization and an investor jointly inaugurated a lab laced with advanced equipment.

Noori said two experienced doctors had been appointed in the lab who had received their master’s degrees in the field of agriculture and livestock from India.

According Noori, the lab would recognize and treat chicken with the help of advanced technology on the zone level.

Mohammad Sami, a resident of 2nd police district of Kandahar City, said eating eggs in the morning breakfast in this modern era had drastically increased and were considered a healthy diet.

He added eggs produced locally could not found in the market and as a result people had to eat eggs imported from Iran and Pakistan despite their poor quality.

Sami urged the Agriculture Ministry to increase domestic production of eggs in order to replace foreign products.

He also asked the ministry to control the imports of poor quality medicines from neighboring countries because the phenomenon was harming local investors.

The ministry should pave the way for establishing chicken breading facilities so people were not forced to buy chicken food from neighboring countries, he added.

Chicken farms has also grown in number in recent years in Kandahar with investment in the sector reaching around 500 million afghanis.

About 470 farms active across the country produce hundreds kilograms of meat and they meet 70 per cent of the consumption demand.